THE NEW YORKER suspect, Julius Held's feeling about "The Polish Rider" would disqualify him as a reliable ad vocate. But certain things happen when a human being stands in front of a picture that are not entirely rational. Gary Schwartz con- fesses to having undergone as a student in the presence of Rembrandt's work "moments of something like lnystic transport." David Freedberg, in the course of a rational enough conversa- tion about the R.R.P., said of "The Polish Rider," "It continues to move me." More than lesser artists, Rem- brandt makes us share his own feelings about youth, old age, isolation, and love. The R.R.P. is clearly chary of this emotional impact (What if that name Rembrandt were removed from "The Polish Rider"-what then would we see and feel?) The artist they seem to envision is one with a piercing imagi- nation, immense concentration, and consciousness of being extraordinary. For many, however, Rembrandt's per- sonality is less rigorous and single- minded. There is often a "doubleness" or "otherness" to be seen in his works. To Eugène Fromentin, it often seemed that Rembrandt was "looking else- where." As for "The Polish Rider," which Kenneth Clark called "the most personal and mysterious of his later paintings," Arthur Wheelock thinks that "its very strength comes from the tension between the many elements in It and the many traditions it draws on." Although the subject of the picture and the purpose of the rider remain uncer- tain, that very uncertainty (who is he? where is he going?), made manifest in paint, could be a strong argument for those who think that the Rembrandt Research Project is riding in the wrong direction. J OSUA BRUYN has said that the R.R.P., before coming to its final decision on "The Polish Rider," will have to "look closely at Rembrandt's work in the sixteen-fifties." (There seems to be no dissent, at least, on 1655 as the approximate date for the paint- ing of "The Polish Rider," although this conjecture has hitherto been based on the understanding that the picture was by Rembrandt and represented his way of working at that time.) What about those years, and his life in them? Bruyn has not said anything about looking closely at Rembrandt's life in the sixteen-fifties. The first two volumes of the "Corpus" appeared to shun the artist who actually painted the pictures they were examining in such detail. A doctrine current among some scholars concerns the dangers of the "biographical fallacy," which is to believe that one can find the artist in his works-a process that, in a vicious circle, could lead one to attribute works to the artist whose personality one has thus conjured up. This anti-biographi- cal attitude is perhaps in part a reactIon to the excesses of past writers who- as van de Wetering has remarked- saw the morals of the man reflected in his paintings, and therefore, because of such pictures as the one of Rem- brandt carousing with Saskia in his lap, took him to be a boozy spend- thrift. Some contemporary experts, like Alpers and Schwartz, see a man whose work they regard as done almost whol- I y in reaction to his patrons and "the mar ket." According to the "Corpus," Rembrandt supplied paintings after 1656 generally in order to payoff debts. Artists, like writers or com- posers, may indeed produce works for a market, for interested purchasers, but their work usually arises out of their own compulsions, interests, strengths, and apprehensions. And so Rem- brandt's close and loving drawings of women and children, his marvellously observant Biblical etchings are not simply hackwork but were impelled by his nature, by the man he was. In 1654, a two-year-old Anglo- Dutch war came to an end. An eco- nomic recession was felt throughout the decade. In 1653, trade was nearly at a standstill, fifteen hundred houses stood empty in Amsterdam, and the city fathers decided not to build the second story of the new town hàll. In 1655, evidently feeling more buoyant, they went on with the building. Am- sterdam continued to be one of the most welcoming, tolerant, and wealth- ', 75 creating cities in Europe, though one in which the Calvinist ascendancy pe- riodically made itself felt. Hellfire and damnation were part of the atmo- sphere. For Rembrandt's household, ecclesiastical trouble came in the form of the local church council's admonish- ing Rembrandt's common-law wife, Hendrickje, for living "like a whore" with the artist. (Hendrickje gave birth to Rembrandt's daughter Cornelia in the latter half of 1654.) And there were constant reminders of mortality. The plague hit Amsterdam in 1656 and caused the death of nearly eighteen thousand people. Rembrandt's most talented pupil, Carel Fabritius, had been killed in an explosion of the Delft arsenal, in 1654. The artist's financial problems which seemed to be caused by his expensive house and ex- pensive art-buying habits (and possibly by unwise or unlucky investments), in- tensified at this time: some of his possessions were auctioned off at the Keizerskroon Inn in 1655; he was de- clared insolvent in the following year; more of his possessions were then sold; and, finally, in 1660, his large Bree- straat house was sold. A few other facts about Rembrandt during this time: He still had a number of talented pupils. He visited J an Six on his country estate at Ijmond and drew him there, writing. He was in contact with such eminent physicians as Dr. Arnout Tholincx, the inspector of the Amsterdam Medical Colleges, whose portrait he both etched and painted in 1656, and Tholincx's successor in that post, Dr. Jan Deyman, whose "Anat- omy Lesson" he painted in the same year. He had professional dealings with a printseller, a goldsmith, an art dealer, a writing master, and a Portuguese- Jewish merchant, and with the bailiff of the Court of Insolvency, known as Old Haaring, whose portrait he etched. He seems to have been able to turn adversity into copy. An inventory made for the court in July, 1656, lists among his works various landscapes- by twilight, with mountains, and un- finished -and also a painting referred to simply as "a horse, from life." (One wonders. No painting of a horse by itself survives.) The inventory re- minds us that he still had among his possessions at this time numerous bows, arrows, and swords. The curved sabre in "The Polish Rider" appears to be the weapon from his armory which is